The England rugby team's scrummy mummies in mini baby boom

As a general rule, expectant mothers are advised to avoid stressful situations.

So when England's rugby team take on South Africa on Saturday there will be one group of women in particular who will be hoping to avoid another nail-biter.

In a remarkable baby boom, five scrummies - the rugby equivalent to football's WAGs - are soon to become mummies.

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Flankers Lewis Moody and Joe Worsley, scrum-half Peter Richards and prop Perry Freshwater are all first-time fathers-to-be, while captain Phil Vickery will become a father for the second time in the spring.

Moody's wife Annie, a 29-year-old interior designer, is five months pregnant with her first child.

She has been travelling backwards and forwards between the family home in Leicestershire and France where she has been joining the other wives and girlfriends on the team coach for each game.

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Only last week, in a column entitled Diary of a Scrummy Mummy, she spoke of the camaraderie between the women. After Saturday's tense semi-final victory against

France, the expectant mothers eschewed alcohol in favour of a celebratory glass of mineral water.

Sitting alongside Mrs Moody at the Stade de France on Saturday will be close friend Jo Wood, the 29-year-old longtime partner of Richards.

The personal trainer, who specialises in helping pregnant women, is six months

pregnant and last night joked that she 'almost had the baby' during the last game.

"The most stress I've had has been watching the games,' she said, adding: "It is nice having some of the other girls who are pregnant, someone to share the

experience and talk baby stuff with."

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As for the final, she said: "It's going to be an incredible game. The best atmosphere I've ever been in was last weekend.

"I was shouting for the last ten minutes and then crying my eyes out. It's just a dream and this weekend is going to be pretty amazing."

Miss Wood is friends with Worsley's wife Nicola, 28, who is understood to be five or six months pregnant. The striking blonde and the rugby player met at Brunel University and married in Italy last year.

Freshwater married his wife Fran in a Christmas ceremony in New Zealand, the country of his birth. She is now understood to be also five or six months pregnant.

Vickery and his wife Kate have a daughter called who Megan is 20 months old.